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Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
Born	April 25, 1990 (age 34); Saudi Arabia
Nationality	Palestinian
Citizenship	American
Occupation(s)	Executive Director, Project Unified Assistance

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (born April 25, 1990)^[1]^[2] is a Palestinian American humanitarian activist and blogger. He is the founder and executive director of Project Unified Assistance, a nonprofit organization working towards the establishment of a humanitarian airport in the Gaza Strip, to be run and operated by the United Nations.

Early life and education

Alkhatib's family is originally from the Gaza Strip. His grandparents had lived in Hamama and Ramla, but were displaced in the Nakba.^[3]

Alkhatib was born in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as a United Nations physician.^[4]^[5] He and his family returned to Gaza in 2000,^[4] and his father began working at the Jabalia refugee camp.^[5] As a child, Alkhatib hoped to become a politician or diplomat.^[1] At age 11, Alkhatib was caught in an Israeli airstrike, which killed three of his friends and left him with permanent hearing loss in one ear.^[1]^[3]

Alkhatib left Gaza in 2005, at the age of 15,^[6] for a one-year-long U.S. Department of State-sponsored cultural exchange program. He spent the year in Pacifica, California, where he learned meditation from his host mom, a Buddhist and retired social worker. He also attended sessions with Living Room Dialogue, a Jewish-Palestinian group based in San Mateo, marking the first time he had spoken to Jews or Israelis.^[1]

Upon completing the program, Alkhatib attempted to return to Gaza via Egypt but was unable to do so. The abduction of an Israeli soldier had resulted in the closure of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt. Alkhatib remained in Egypt for months without being able to enter Gaza.^[7] He applied for and received political asylum in the U.S.,^[1] where he finished high school at San Francisco Waldorf and went on to City College and the University of San Francisco,^[8] where he studied marketing and became interested in social entrepreneurship.^[9] In 2023 he earned a master's degree in intelligence studies at American Military University.^[8]

Career

Alkhatib has published work in The Atlantic,^[10] The Forward,^[11] Haaretz,^[12] Newsweek,^[13] The Times of Israel,^[14] The Jewish Chronicle,^[15] The Wall Street Journal,^[16] and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.^[17] Alkhatib is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council.^[18]

Project Unified Assistance

Alkhatib has had a lifelong interest in aviation and desire to work in the field, especially during the time when Gaza's international airport was operational. After the destruction of the Gaza airport by Israeli air strikes during the Second Intifada, he was convinced of the need "to play a role in restoring aviation services to the people of Gaza".^[4] Project Unified Assistance represents the culmination of Alkhatib's interests in aviation, social entrepreneurship, and desire to help the Palestinian population living in Gaza.^[9]

Personal life

Alkhatib became a U.S. citizen in 2014, at the age of 24.^[1]^[7]

2017 Ben Gurion Airport incident

In 2017, while attempting to visit his sister and parents in Israel, Alkhatib was deported from Ben Gurion Airport. Although he is a naturalized U.S. citizen and had not traveled to Palestinian territories for over a decade, Israeli authorities claimed that he was a Palestinian with "active citizenship." Later, Alkhatib published details about what took place during the deportation in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post.^[6]